If you’re a brand hiring a PR agency to generate immediate ROI, you’re going to be disappointed. Why? PR just doesn’t work that way. I was reminded of this recently with my own little side hustle which is a jewellery brand. Of course, I spent time pitching it to journalists and we got great results. In fact, we landed a quarter page profile feature in a very big Australian women’s print magazine and so we sat back and waited for sales to roll in. Nothing. After a full week, we had ONE sale that we could attribute to that feature (the customer purchased the same earrings the magazine wrote about). Just one sale from a magazine read by over 300,000 people. Eeeeekkkk.
Does that mean PR doesn’t work? No. Let me explain why. Well, in the weeks that followed our big feature in that women’s magazine, I got a call from a potential stockist who wanted to sell our jewellery in their bricks and mortar store (fast forward a couple of weeks and we’ve generated thousands in sales from this store). I also got an email from a photographer who wanted to use our jewellery in a photoshoot (yay to quality content that can be shared on our socials). I also received an enquiry to collaborate on an event (more potential customers seeing our products). All of this directly came from that magazine feature (clever old me blatantly asked them ‘how did you find out about us’ haha). Not to mention that we now have that vanity metric of being able to say on our website that we were featured in that big magazine.
Was any of these ‘results’ immediate ROI? No. But did it do big things for our little business? Yes. Is it helping us to build a brand that our customers can trust? Yes. Will we keep pushing forward with PR even though there clearly wasn’t much immediate ROI (well, yeah, obviously we have an advantage being able to do it ourselves). But my point is, if you are turning to PR for immediate sales results, please consider other options available (there’s some great ones out there)! But if you are looking for long-term recognition that can pay dividends over time (hello brand awareness, credibility, trust and being able to open up doors for collaboration), PR is just for you.
